This invention relates to the manufacture of garments and more particularly to a method for making a garment from nonwoven fibrous material.
The present invention, while of general application, is particularly well suited for use in the manufacture of bib aprons of the type having a continuous strip of material which serves as both a neck loop and as tie elements for the apron. The strip passes through folded corner portions of the apron and is of a length sufficient to permit the tying of the tie elements either in back or in front of the wearer. One particularly advantageous apron of this character is disclosed in the copending United States patent application by Richard A. Batt filed concurrently herewith, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,801,905.
Heretofore, difficulties have been encountered in the manufacture of bib aprons and related garments through the use of mass production techniques. As an illustration, it was often necessary, in previous processes employed for this purpose, to produce the garments on a piece work basis, with at least some of the cutting, folding, fastening and transporting operations being performed in a more or less manual fashion. The remaining operations for the most part necessitated the use of quite complicated machinery which was difficult and expensive to obtain and was occasionally unreliable in use. In addition, and this has been of special moment in the manufacture of garments of the bib apron type, problems arose heretofore in the assembly and fastening of the neck loops and tie elements to the main body portions of the garments.